Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below
napsgear
genezapharmateuticals
domestic-supply
puritysourcelabs
Research Chemical SciencesUGFREAKeudomestic
napsgeargenezapharmateuticals domestic-supplypuritysourcelabsResearch Chemical SciencesUGFREAKeudomestic

How long do U rest between sets & wait until your 2nd same body part exercise?

bnbhoha

New member
This is my first post as a newbie; I've been reading these forums for a couple of weeks and have a few questions for some people who have been lifting for a while.

My main goal at this time is to gain size and strength. 5'10 140lb

1. How long do you rest between sets. I normally time myself for exactly 1 min. Some people rest 90 sec and others two minutes or longer. What would be the ideal rest time between sets.? Would the type of muscle your're training matter, or the kind of exercise your doing ie. bench press? I plan on doing the 5x5x5 and was curious how long I should rest between sets.

2. Obviously, everyone has a different way of training and not everyone shares the same philosophy. This is a two part question:

a.) When training a body part, let's take biceps as an example, how do you determine how many exercises or sets you are going to do? I'm content on doing 2 exercises per body part and around 3 sets; my muscles are sore after doing this (probably because I'm starting out) I've heard of people doing up to 5-6 different exercises. Should I count exercises or sets?

b.) Using biceps as an example again, let's say you finished your standing barbell curls, how long do you wait until you do your next bicep exercise? Do you rest (if so, how long) or do you go to your next bicep exercise? Or, do you do another exercise, like triceps, in between your bicep workout? Basically, how long do you wait until you do your second, third exercise to train the same body part?

Thank you all in advance ;)
 
1. I rest longer on the compound mvmts - 3 min
2. count sets - but don't do 6 different biceps exercises - for 1 set each
2. b I rest as long as i did between previous sets- maybye slightly longer, but not much
 
I train heavy always...to me anyhow....I do 3 exercise with a minimum of 5 reps for each bodypart...and I generally take 3 minutes in between...they say to sit still and not pace around etc...but i jack myself on ephedrine, so i cant sit still to long.....

E
 
I jsut wait till my heart rate to slow down and i can catch my breath. Not a resting heart rate though... sometimes its 4-5 min, sometimes its 1-3 min...it all depends on the lift...
 
this is a program thingy i have followed for about 8 weeks and i got good strength and rapid mass gains with it.

Split the Back, Chest, Arms, Legs, Shoulders into seperate workouts in a week period. So u train each body part 1 per week with 2 days rest somewhere in the week.

For each body part or major muscle eg the chest;
-Start off with a compound movement such as Bench Press.
-Do 2-3 warmup and weight acclimation sets when starting off (should be easy) then do 3-4 really heavy sets of about 4-6 reps.
-Then you should move onto at least 2 more secondary exercises such as incline bench press, dips and cable crossovers.
-These secondary exercises should be 2-4 sets for each exercise with reps ranging from anywhere between 4-10 reps.
-As a general rule when you are bulking and going for mass, take at least 2-3 minutes between sets and exercises. This allows for enough ATP to reenter the muscle for maximumal effort and overload.

So for chest it may look a little like this:

Bench Press: (warmup) 1x8(10kg),
(2xweightacclimation) 1x8(20kg), 1x7(35),
(heavy overload sets) 4x4-6(50KG)

Incline Press: (3 heavy overload sets) 3x4-6(40KG)

Dips: (2 sets) 2x8 (own body weight)

cable crossovers: (2 sets) 2x10 (10Kg)

*Notice how i dont do warmups or weight acclimation sets after the beggining compound exercise because my pectoral muscle has already warmed up.

So for each body part i generally follow this same pattern eg quads i will do the first compound movement of squats followed up with leg press and lunges.
In this same day i will do hamstrings and calves but i dont bother warming them up much because i am already quite warmed up but i might just do a quick warmup set for each.

Hope this helps (fuck this took a while to type up)
 
Thank you for the input. I thought 2-3 minutes rest between sets was too long. I guess I've been going half a$$ on my first set after warm up. On my first set I would do (bench as an example) 8-9 reps (even though I could probably do 11-12), but If I did the 11 reps the first time, I wouldn't be able to reach my goal of atleast 8 on the second set. The third set is where I would put all my effort in and once I hit my goal 8-9 reps, I would up the weight and start over. So my first bench set wouldn't be very intense. I think I'm doing this so that I would have enough energy to slam the weight up on my second set because I was only resting 1 min between sets.

-Now using 2-3 minute rests, after my warm up set, should I up the weight on my bench so that I can ONLY perform 6-8 reps on my first set and keep the same weight and try to do the range with my second and third set using the longer rests (2-3 minutes)

-Finally, you guys are only resting 2-3 minutes after your first exercise and then continuing to the next exercise for the same body part? If you're going all out, wouldn't resting for 10 min give you the same or even better results rather than waiting 2-3 minutes. The whole point is to break down the muscle. You've broken down a little bit with your first exercise and on your second exercise (I figure) your going to be fatigued and not be able to go all out and put much effort into it. Whereas if you waited a little bit, you may be able to put more effort into it and use more weight.

Does this make sense? I hope I'm not confusing the heck out of you, because I'm starting to get confused. I think it may in due part by reading Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty where he preaches intense one set per exercise per body part.
 
i dont see why it would take the muscle longer to recover just because you are going to do a different exercise. The rest time is only there so your body can put ATP into the muscle so you can lift the weight. The rest time doesnt actually repair the muscle.
2-3 breaks all the way through a sufficient. Waiting 10 mintues will only result in the blood leaving the muscle so it can begin its repair.
 
Well, here was what I was told by Zyg a while back.

Resting a good 3 mins between sets improves CNS (central nervous system) stimulation which apparently means you get more muscles involved or cooperating in each set. Resting only 30 seconds between sets will fatigue the muscle and make it grow in mass. So for example on incline dumbell press I do this.

At 80% of my 1 rep max I do

1x5 - rest 3 mins
1x5 - rest 3 mins
1x5 - rest 30 seconds
1x5- rest 30 seconds
1x5

Though on barbell curls I can start with 90% of my 1RM but I end up doing drop sets by the 4th set because I can't pump out 5 after that.

Explosive movements on contraction are supposed to improve CNS as well, I've been trying those explosive pushups lately, I can feel what they were talking about on those.

Though usually that last set I can barely pump out 3 or 4.

For pushups I do sets as well starting with a good 25 or so then resting only 15 seconds between, I get to where I can only do about 4 by the time I hit the 3rd or 4th set.

I think it all depends on what you're going for, strength or mass. I'd say do both.

Keep in mind though that I take a tsp of creatine supplement daily before my workout, this assists in ATP restoration so my recovery periods seem a lot faster compared to when I don't take any.

Hope that helps.
 
fatigue the muscle and make it grow in mass.

errrr....fatigue doesnt make your muscles grow dude. Overload does. Making your muscles push heavier weights than they have ever been used to. You can only get the energy to make your body attempt to push these weights with 3 mins rest the whole time. 30 seconds will just make the next set useless IMO.
 
michaelcoutts said:


errrr....fatigue doesnt make your muscles grow dude. Overload does. Making your muscles push heavier weights than they have ever been used to. You can only get the energy to make your body attempt to push these weights with 3 mins rest the whole time. 30 seconds will just make the next set useless IMO.

I think what he means is that for hypertrophy training, you work the muscles in a fatigued state. You rest longer when you are training more specifically for CNS.

At least, that's what I got out of the post by Zyg.

Here is the post by Zyg that I was referring to. Not sure if it is the same one that was referred to earlier.

http://boards.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=2036852#post2036852

.02,
Joker
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom